Support original American art & handmade craft, created by contemporary artisans living & working in the USA!

Fine Arts & Handmade Crafts in America

History of American Arts & Crafts

The First Arts & Crafts Movement ... Started about 1860 ; Ended about 1925

"The founders of the Arts & Crafts Movement were some of the first major critics of the Industrial Revolution. Disenchanted with the impersonal, mechanized direction of society in the 19th century, they sought to return to a simpler, more fulfilling way of living. The movement is admired for its use of high quality materials and for its emphasis on utility in design..."

"In the last few decades, increasingly sophisticated mass production methods have led to an abundance of choices for consumers, but with that sometimes comes a loss of individuality and quality. More and more people are therefore rejecting machine-produced products in favor of handmade items from independent retailers, crafters, and artists. This social trend mirrors the original Arts and Crafts Movement of the 19th century..."

What happened to the "Juried OnLine Arts Festival" ?

The Juried OnLine Arts Festival (JOLAF.com) went onto the internet in 1996 as one of the very first directory-type gallery sites devoted exclusively to the presentation of original art and handmade craft. JOLAF continued until 2016, at which point the web had grown a thousand-fold, and larger, more sophisticated and better financed venues such as Etsy.com and "Amazon Handmade" completely dominated the landscape.

However for at least 10-15 years, JOLAF was the first gateway for many artists & craftspeople as they became aware of the extraordinary power of the WWW, to get their work seen not only in the USA but literally around the world.

If you'd like to get a small glimpse of what our early online gallery looked like, you can do so by clicking the link below (we've removed most of the JOLAF pages from that time period, but not the ones with various artist names & mediums). Be aware that since our founding, and even since we ceased adding new members in 2016, many of the original exhibitors have retired, or changed their online addresses, or even left this world, so their websites are no longer active. We offer these few archived "Art Mediums" pages simply to remember the golden olden days, when it all got started...